Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University


 

"The Palace Thief"

(1993)


Ethan Canin

(July 19, 1960– )

 

 

"The Palace Thief" Notes

This short story by Ethan Canin was first published in The Paris Review 128 (fall 1993).

 

169  St. Benedict: patron saint of Europe and of school children

170  demagogue:

 

170  Wendell Wilkie: Wilkie was the Republican presidential candidate running against President Franklin D. Roosvelt in the 1940 election




  • Franklin Roosevelt, conversation with Lowell Mellett about spreading stories of Wendell Wilkie's private life to the media (1940; with transcript; 10:50 min.)

 
170  Julius Caesar:




  • Rome: Rise and Fall of an Empire (2008)



171  Shutruk-Nahhunte: a king of Elam (currently in southwestern Iran) in 1,160 BC who founded a new dynasty


175  first-form: a secondary school level equivalent to grade 7, a common system among private preparatory schools

 

176  Truman:

 

177  Robert E. Lee:


178  potentate:

179  cut:

 

179  Hadrian's gate:


180  John F. Dulles: The real John Foster Dulles attended public schools in Watertown, New York. He went on to Princeton University, the Sorbonne in Paris, George Washington University Law School, and was US Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1959.


John Dulles

 


181  cardinal

184  how the battle is lost for want of a horse: note also the implied (but unsaid) comment on a lost rider, i.e., Sedgewick Bell; cf. the proverb and nursery rhyme which is often used to mean small things can have great consequences, or the outcome of history or the greater course of things can depend on small details:

        For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
        For want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
        For want of a horse, the rider was lost,
        For want of a rider, the battle was lost,
        For want of a battle, the kingdom was lost,
        And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

185  Scipio Africanus Major


200  The die is cast: an expression that dates from classical times; the dice has been rolled and can't be undone, meaning decisions or actions have been made that cannot be unmade and certain consequences will inevitably follow, a phrase that indicates both resignation and determination, an ironic mix of reluctance and decisiveness; Mr. Hundert, being a teacher of ancient Roman history, is probably thinking not merely of the meaning of the phrase in general usage, but also of its historical Caesar

203  a taste of copper in my throat: the usual phrase is "a taste of copper in my mouth," copper referring to blood or something that tastes like blood


211  Il Iacta alea esto: Latin for "Let the die be cast," attributed to Julius Caesar as he crosses the Rubicon river, in effect, declaring war against ancient France in 49 B.C.E. It has the sense of "once you make your move, you have to live with it, don't regret it, or you can't regret it."

227  whisper into the ear of the chairman: cf. the expression "to have someone's ear" which means "to know someone with power or authority who will listen to you" (Macmillan Dictionary), "to be able to give someone advice, influence them, etc. because they trust you" (Oxford Advanced American Dictionary), to "have access to and influence with someone" (Oxford Dictionaries); "If someone has the ear of an important person, their ideas are listened to and considered important by that person." (Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary); a somewhat eerie echo of the earlier ear-aid transmitter image during the Mr. Julius Caesar rematch






Themes


Ken James: Ethan, what was the theme in this story for you as a writer?

 

Ethan Canin: The theme has to do with the power of a quiet life… The power of a man to really make a change with his heart, his soul, as opposed to having to be rich. A different kind of idol… A teacher’s life is a very powerful, dignified life. We shouldn’t forget that. That’s what Mr. Hundert loses sight of in the movie, and regains in the end. God bless a great teacher… I didn’t have many.

 

Ken James: You say you didn’t have many great teachers. Was there one in particular that influenced you?


Ethan Canin: I actually wrote [this story] after encountering—20 years after graduating—an old grade school teacher of mine. He was a fabulous teacher: a tyrant. It turns out those are the kind of teachers I remember. All the Roman and Greek history that was in the story (not in the movie) I actually remembered cause he just drove it into us.

I met the guy on the street 20 years later and he was practically homeless. He was bedraggled. He was ill. He died a couple of months later. I went home that day and wrote the story just thinking of him.


—Ken James, "The Emperor's Club Interviews with Author Ethan Canin and Screenwriter Neil Tolkin" (2002)



 



 

 

      

Study Questions

  • Mr. Hundert begins his narrative with a list of negations regarding the purpose of the story: “not for my own honor,” “not as a warning,” “Nor do I tell it in apology for St. Benedict’s School” (169).  What effect does this beginning of denials have on your perception of the narrator and on your anticipation of the story?

  • How does the initial pronouncement “This is a story without surprises” turn out as you continue to read?
  • What is the Mr. Julius Caesar competition to the St. Benedict’s community?
  • Crime and Punishment
    • Mr. Hundert says that his "first mistake" was giving Sedgewick Bell "an A on a quiz on which he had earned only a B" (181). Do you agree with Hundert that this was his first bad step?
    • Of all the wrong things Mr. Hundert does in the story, which should he feel most guilty for? Why?
    • Which of Mr. Hundert's actions toward Sedgewick Bell does he consider a wrong, and how does he correct it/them?
    • Who do you consider the thief who has stolen from the "palace" in "The Palace Thief" and why?
    • In what ways, if at all, are the characters who make a morally questionable act or think they have punished for their crimes?
  • What role do parents play in St. Benedict’s School?
  • Explain Sedgewick Bell's "labyrinthine wiliness" (187).
  • How do the actions of Mr. Hundert and Sedgewick in the two Mr. Julius Caesar contests set up your expectations for the coal-miners’ campaign scene?
  • Consider the battle imagery in the story. What is compared to a battle? The battles in this story are fought for what goals and with what weapons? Do the things being fought for and weapons used in fighting change as the story progresses? 
  • How does Hundert’s selective rhetoric of certainty (“of course,” “obvious,” “knew”) against uncertainty (“I suppose,” “might,” perhaps) affect your reading of content couched within either? For example, consider these two sets of expressions:
    • Expressions made in language that normally indicates certainty
      • an average wood-beetle in the floor of my classroom could have done so with ease. (174)
      • Of course, I have great respect for what Mr. Woodbridge did for St. Benedict's in the years he was among us. (185)
      • Of course, he also offered a good sum of money to me personally. (201–2)
      • I knew it as certainly as if he had shown me. (213)
      • Of course, it makes no difference in the course of history that as I tried to hold up the coat Sedgewick Bell moved swiftly across the podium (225)
    • Expressions made in language that normally indicates uncertainty
      • This is why, I suppose, I accepted the invitation sent to me by Mr. Sedgewick Bell at the end of last year (170)
      • In retrospect, however, perhaps my strategy was a mistake (174)
      • Perhaps that is why I again found an untenable compassion muddying my thoughts. (185)
      • I suppose, in fact, that I lost my advantage here by underestimating my opponents (196)
      • I had only taken it out of some vague sentiment that a pistol might eventually prove decisive. (199)
      • I suppose I was flattered. (201)
      • I was sixty-eight years old—yes, perhaps too old to be headmaster (205)
      • perhaps that is why...I decided to go hear him speak. (221)
      • I am reading of the ancient Japanese civilization now, which I had somehow neglected before (226)
  • Considering what the Gazette picture reveals, "an old man who has on his face the remnants of a proud and foolish smile" (225), what difference is there, then, between the "ignorant" miners and the "educated" and knowing Mr. Hundert?
  • How does Mr. Hundert's feelings about Sedgewick change throughout the story?
  • How are past, present, and future events connected in the story through cause and effect, and through literary devices?
  • Is Mr. Hundert a good teacher? Explain.

 

 

 


 

Review Sheet

 

Characters

Mr. Hundert – a history teacher at St. Benedict's School; "I had come to this job straight from my degree at Carleton College at the age of twenty-one, having missed enlistment due to myopia" (184); "I was sixty-eight years old—yes, perhaps too old to be headmaster" (205)

Sedgewick Bell – son of Senator Bell; "Sedgewick appeared in my classroom in November of 1945, in a short-pants suit. It was midway through the fall term" (170); thirteen years old when he entered the first form at St. Benedict's (175); "natural leadership" (174); "He had grown physically larger as well, and now when I chanced upon him on the campus, he held his ground against my disapproving stare with a dark one of his own...he had cultivated, despite his boorish character, an impressive popularity among his schoolmates...His stride had become a strut" (191)

Fred Masoudi – "a somewhat gifted boy" (181); "bouncing about in the Italian suit and alligator shoes of the advertising industry, yet he was still drawn immediately to the other do-nothings from his class" (208)
Martin Blythe – "a studious type" (181); "lost half his leg as an officer in Korea, and now, among his classmates, he tried to hide his lurching stride, but he wore the same knitted brow that he used to wear in my classroom" (208)
Deepak Mehta – "the son of a Bombay mathematician, who was dreadfully quiet but clearly my best student" (181); "had become a professor of Asian history, walked with a slight stoop, yet he still turned his eyes downward when spoken to" (208); "his rise through academia to a post at Columbia University...although he looked healthy enough, he told me that he had recently had a small heart attack" (209)

Charles Ellerby – "our new Latin instructor" (189); "I confided in him about Sedgewick Bell's behavior and Mr. Woodbridge's response, he suggested that it was my duty to circumvent our headmaster and speak directly to the boy's father" (189)

Mr. Woodbridge headmaster of St. Benedict's School (171)
Senator Sedgewick Hyram Bell(175); "At the time, Senator Sedgewick Hyram Bell as appearing regularly in the newspapers and on the radio in his stand against Truman's plan for national health insurance" (176); "feisty as a game hen, bursting through a side door and clapping me on the shoulder" (177); "likeable" (177);
Charles Ellerby(175); "



Setting

Place

USA

    Woodmere, Virginia

        St. Benedict's School – "St. Benedict's lies in the bucolic, equine expanse of rural Virginia, nearer in spirit to the Carolinas than to Maryland" (177); "I taught you [Sedgewick Bell] at St. Benedict's School in Woodmere, Virginia" (225)

            Mr. Hundert's history classroom – (170)

            Mr. Hundert's room – "In those days I lived in small quarters off the rear of the main hall, in what had been a slave’s room...With my bed folded into the wall, the room became my office" (175)

        retirement lodging –

    Washington, D.C.

        Senator Bell's office – "The office was as grand as a duke's" (177)

    Charlotte, Carolina

        island – "The event [rematch of Mr. Julius Caesar] was to take place on an island off the Outer Banks of Carolina that belonged to EastAmerica Steel" (203); "On the island I was shown to a suite of rooms in a high corner of the lodge, with windows and balconies overlooking the sea" (207)

            EastAmerica's lodge – "That evening all of us ate together in the lodge" (207)



Time

Autumn(170)

    November 1945 – "Sedgewick appeared in my classroom in November of 1945" (170)
    March 15, 1946 – "On the fifteenth of March, when the three finalists took their seats on stage in front of the assembled population of the school, Sedgewick Bell was among them, and his father was among the audience" (181)

Summer – "But as the summer progressed, a certain dread began to form in my mind" (205)

    June 1986 – "At the commencement exercises in June a small section of the ceremony was spent in my honor" (203); "in the eerie quiet of summer" (204)

    July 1986 – "In early July, however, Sedgewick Bell's secretary finally did call" (206)

   

 

 



Sample Student Responses to Ethan Canin's "The Palace Thief"

 


Response 1:

 

 

 

 

 

Wijitra Duangpaisal

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

June 21, 2013

Reading Response 1

  

Title

 

Text

 

 

 

 

 

  

Response 2:

 

 

 

 

 

Ardhasidh Kumjin

2202234 Introduction to the Study of English Literature

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

November 3, 2013

Reading Response 1

  

In Fact, I Lied: The Paradox of Teaching

 

Teachers, even—or especially—those who consider themselves to be good, as Mr. Hundert in Ethan Canin’s “The Palace Thief” shows us, will do all sorts of bad things in the course of teaching. In the service of education, to teach boys to be good students and better adults, Mr. Hundert lies, commits cardinal sins in teaching, takes bribes, helps students to cheat, violates rules, and, in effect, becomes a criminal (189). If his students turn out morally upright citizens, it is the converse of teaching by example.

In an attempt to reach out to morally dubious Sedgewick Bell, he takes out Martin Blythe from the competition (181). Later, in an effort to teach Sedgewick a lesson about cheating, he forces innocent Deepak Mehta to cheat. By asking Mehta an illegitimate question, he eliminates a potential winner who is unqualified for the competition in the first place. To right a wrong, he commits further wrongs. By punishing Sedgewick for cheating, he is teaching Mehta to win by it.

Just as tragedies can have more impact than comedies, so too the lessons of school and life are often most forceful when they come at moments of loss. For students, it seems nothing is as shocking as failure. And, by Canin’s observation in an interview and Mr. Hundert’s own admittance: “The best of my teachers had been tyrants” (184). It is ironic to think of failure and oppression as conditions for effective learning, yet “The Palace Thief” seems to present the idea that we learn best by disappointment and bad example. The heartbreak and injustice of a liar and cheater being cheered into government office and having the power to sway and command while a truthsayer is unheard in the resulting noise delivers its own potent lesson. Most selfishly, it may urge one to prevent seeing such a history made.

 

 

 

 

 

            

 


 

 


Media




  • The Emperor's Club, dir. Michael Hoffman, perf. Kevin Kline, Emile Hirsch, Joel Gretsch (2002; 1 hr. 49:10 min.)

 


Ethan Canin
Interviews and Profiles

 


 

Reference

Canin, Ethan. "The Palace Thief." The Palace Thief. London: Bloomsbury, 1994. 169227.  Print.



 


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Last updated January 29, 2015